Authors
Abraham A Clements, Eric Gustafson, Tobias Scharnowski, Paul Grosen, David Fritz, Christopher Kruegel, Giovanni Vigna, Saurabh Bagchi, Mathias Payer
Publication date
2020
Conference
29th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 20)
Pages
1201-1218
Description
Given the increasing ubiquity of online embedded devices, analyzing their firmware is important to security, privacy, and safety. The tight coupling between hardware and firmware and the diversity found in embedded systems makes it hard to perform dynamic analysis on firmware. However, firmware developers regularly develop code using abstractions, such as Hardware Abstraction Layers (HALs), to simplify their job. We leverage such abstractions as the basis for the re-hosting and analysis of firmware. By providing high-level replacements for HAL functions (a process termed High-Level Emulation–HLE), we decouple the hardware from the firmware. This approach works by first locating the library functions in a firmware sample, through binary analysis, and then providing generic implementations of these functions in a full-system emulator.
Total citations
202020212022202320241242364631
Scholar articles
AA Clements, E Gustafson, T Scharnowski, P Grosen… - 29th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security …, 2020